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Dessert

Snow Souffle

A light, airy dessert made with egg whites, gelatin, sugar, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Snow Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth.

  2. Dissolve the gelatin in the hot water.

Make the mousse

  1. Add the sugar and lemon juice to the gelatin mixture and let it cool.

  2. Stir the beaten egg whites into the cooled mixture until it is white and stiff.

  3. Mould the mixture and pour soft custard around it.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the dessert its light, airy structure.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid mixture so it holds its shape when moulded.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps stabilise the whipped foam.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring the beaten egg whites into the cooled mixture. The gelatine must be cool but still liquid, or it may set before the whites are folded in. Overmixing knocks air out of the foam, so the dessert turns dense rather than light.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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